Freedom of Space
Not many of you, I suppose, can imagine the time before the satellite
relays gave us our present world communications system. When I was a
boy, it was impossible to send TV programs across the ocean, or even to
establish reliable radio contact around the curve of the Earth without
picking up a fine assortment of crackles and bangs on the way. Yet now
we take interference-free circuits for granted, and think nothing of
seeing our friends on the other side of the globe as clearly as if we
were standing face to face. Indeed, it's a simple fact that without
the satellite relays, the whole structure of world commerce and
industry would collapse. Unless we were up here on the space stations
to bounce their messages around the globe, how do you think any of the
world's big business organisations could keep their widely scattered
electronic brains in touch with each other?
But all this was still in the future, back in the late seventies, when
we were finishing work on the Relay Chain. I've already told you about
some of our problems and near disasters; they were serious enough at
the time, but in the end we overcame them all. The three stations
spaced around Earth were no longer piles of girders, air cylinders, and
plastic pressure chambers. Their assembly had been completed, we had
moved aboard, and could now work in comfort, unhampered by space suits.
And we had gravity again, now that the stations had been set slowly
spinning. Not real gravity, of course; but centrifugal force feels
exactly the same when you're out in space. It was pleasant being able
to pour drinks and to sit down without drifting away on the first air
current.
Once the three stations had been built, there was still a year's solid
work to be done installing all the radio and TV equipment that would
lift the world's communications networks into space. It was a great
day when we established the first TV link between England and
Australia. The signal was beamed up to us in Relay Two, as we sat
above the center of Africa, we flashed it across to Three poised over
New Guinea and they shot it down to Earth again, clear and clean after
its ninety-thousand-mile journey.
These, however, were the engineers' private tests. The official
opening of the system would be the biggest event in the history of
world communication an elaborate global telecast, in which every nation
would take part. It would be a three-hour show, as for the first time
the live TV camera roamed around the world, proclaiming to mankind that
the last barrier of distance was down.
The program planning, it was cynically believed, had taken as much
effort as the building of the space stations in the first place, and of
all the problems the planners had to solve, the most difficult was that
of choosing a compare or master of ceremonies to introduce the items in
the elaborate global show that would be watched by half the human
race.
Heaven knows how much conniving, blackmail, and downright character
assassination went on behind the scenes. All we knew was that a week
before the great day, a nonscheduled rocket came up to orbit with
Gregory Wendell aboard. This was quite a surprise, since Gregory
wasn't as big a TV personality as, say, Jeffers Jackson in the U.S. or
Vince Clifford in Britain. However, it seemed that the big boys had
canceled each other out, and Gregg had got the coveted job through one
of those compromises so well known to politicians.
Gregg had started his career as a disc jockey on a university radio
station in the American Midwest, and had worked his way up through the
Hollywood and Manhattan night club circuits until he had a daily,
nation-wide program of his own. Apart from his cynical yet relaxed
personality, his biggest asset was his deep velvet voice, for which he
could probably thank his Negro blood. Even when you flatly disagreed
with what he was saying even, indeed, when he was tearing you to pieces
in an interview it was still a pleasure to listen to him.
We gave him the grand tour of the space station, and even (strictly
against regulations) took him out through the air lock in a space suit.
He loved it all, but there were two things he liked in particular.
"This air you make," he said, "it beats the stuff eve to breathe down
in New York. This is the first time my sinus trouble has gone since I
went into TV." He also relished the low gravity; at the station's rim,
a man had half his normal, Earth weight and at the axis he had no
weight at all.
However, the novelty of his sww~di~ didn't distract Gregg from his job.
He spent hours at Communications Central, polishing his script and
getting his cues right, and studying the dozens of monitor screens that
would be his windows on the world. I came across him once while he was
running through his introduction of Queen Elizabeth, who would be
speaking from Buckingham Palace at the very end of the program. He was
so intent on his rehearsal that he never even noticed I was standing
beside him.
Well, that telecast is now part of history. For the first time a
billion human beings watched a single program that came "Eve" from
every corner of the Earth, and was a roll call of the world's greatest
citizens. Hundreds of cameras on land and sea and air looked
inquiringly at the turning globe; and at the end there was that
wonderful shot of the Earth through a zoom lens on the space station,
making the whole planet recede until it was lost among the stars....
There were a few hitches, of course. One camera on the bed of the
Atlantic wasn't ready on cue, and we had to spend some extra time
looking at the Taj Mahal. And owing to a switching error Russian
subtitles were superimposed on the South American transmissions, while
half the USSR.
found itself trying to read Spanish. But this was nothing to what
might have happened.
Through the entire three hours, introducing the famous and the unknown
with equal ease, came the mellow yet never orotund flow of Gregg's
voice. He did a magnificent job; the congratulations came pouring up
the beam the moment the broadcast finished.
But he didn't hear them; he made one short, private call to his agent,
and then went to bed.
Next morning, the Earth-bound ferry was waiting to take him back to any
job he cared to accept.
But it left without Gregg Wendell, now junior station announcer of
Relay Two.
"They'll think I'm crazy," he said, beaming happily, "but why should I
go back to that rat race down there? I've all the universe to look at,
I can breathe smog-free air, the low gravity makes me feel a Hercules,
and my three darling ex wives can't get at me." He kissed his hand to
the departing rocket.
"So long, Earth," he called.
"I'll be back when I start pining for Broadway traffic jams and bleary
penthouse dawns. And if I get homesick, I can look at anywhere on the
planet just by turning a switch. Why, I'm more in the middle of things
here than I could ever be on Earth, yet I can cut myself off from the
human race whenever I want to."
He was still smiling as he watched the ferry begin the long fall back
to Earth, toward the fame and fortune that could have been his. And
then, whistling cheerfully, he left the observation lounge in
eight-foot strides to read the weather forecast for Lower Patagonia.